1930: Fun with Harmonics

Spent some more time with Omega Quintet today, and I am, as I may have mentioned a couple of times already, absolutely thrilled with how enjoyable it is — and that it’s much more than a reskinned Neptunia. Don’t get me wrong, you know how much I love me some Neptunia, but I’m glad that Compile Heart and Idea Factory weren’t resting on their laurels with this one; it would have been very easy indeed for them to simply lift Neptunia’s admittedly very fun combat system and plonk it in Omega Quintet, but instead Omega Quintet has something all of its own.

Perhaps “all of its own” isn’t quite the right description, mind, since Omega Quintet’s combat is executed as something of a curious blend between the battle systems from the Atelier series, the Ar Tonelico series, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII. That’s quite a mixture, but it works really well, particularly when you pull off something as enjoyably silly as this:

The above sequence was recorded at just level 20, by the way; I shudder to think what numbers the girls will be putting out by the end of the game.

Interestingly, the game doesn’t bombard you with the complete combat system right from the get-go; it gradually increases in complexity over the course of the first few chapters at a fairly sedate pace, allowing you to get comfortable and familiar with each new concept before a new one is introduced. Ultimately, by the time the complete battle system has unlocked, you should be well familiar with all the possibilities it has to offer. At about 15 hours or so in, I haven’t seen everything the system has to offer, yet; for some, this may draw unfavourable comparisons to Final Fantasy XIII, which was lambasted for having a “20 hour tutorial”, but it’s worth noting that Omega Quintet does sidestep this issue a little by being somewhat less linear than Final Fantasy XIII was; at any given moment, there’s a bunch of sidequests to do, hidden treasures to find, new areas to open up, items to craft, special items to unlock and all manner of other things to do. (And besides, there was nothing the fuck wrong with the way Final Fantasy XIII did things, anyway. So there.)

Here’s roughly how the system works. Like the Neptunia games, you can get the advantage at the start of combat by attacking an enemy before they come into contact with you; conversely, letting an enemy touch you from behind will give them the advantage. How battle begins sets the opening initiative order, and from there the game follows a clear to understand turn order system, reflected by a graphical representation down the side of the screen.

Each party member has a number of actions per turn, increasing as they increase their overall proficiency with each of the game’s five weapon types — axe, gun, spear, fans and gauntlets. These actions can be used to attack, use a skill or use an item, and when all the actions have been chosen, the party member performs each of them in sequence before the turn order moves on to the next combatant. Of key consideration when choosing skills is the “wait time” — more powerful skills will push the party member’s next turn further down the turn order, potentially giving enemies the opportunity to attack several times before she can go again. Conversely, certain skills increase the enemies’ wait time when they successfully land, so you can manipulate the turn order yourself to a certain degree.

Attacks, skills and even items have an effective range, represented by coloured lines on the ground. Do something to someone in the green area and it will be most effective; then comes blue, yellow and finally red, which means you either can’t do the action at all, or it will be at severely reduced effectiveness. Certain attacks and skills also have a radius, either circular or a range of “tiles” horizontally, vertically or both, meaning you can hit multiple enemies at the same time. At the start of a party member’s turn, you can move them forward or backward in the formation, allowing you to manipulate the positioning to your advantage. There are also “knockback” skills, which are self-explanatory, and “reverse” skills, which… uh, I’m not entirely sure what they do.

Here’s one thing I have to nitpick slightly; there are certain aspects the game doesn’t explain very well or, indeed, at all in some cases. The stat names, for example, don’t take the usual Attack/Defense/Magic Attack/Magic Defense/Accuracy/Agility format from other Compile Heart games; instead we have Song Power/Stamina/Knowledge/Divinity/Technique/Vitality. You can work out what they are from a bit of experimentation, but it takes a bit of adjustment. Likewise, some of the status effects and added effects (such as the aforementioned “Reverse”) aren’t made very clear at all, though again, you can probably work these things out for yourself.

Personally, I’m actually all for games encouraging you to figure out some of their mechanics for yourself. You don’t need to understand these things to get a kick out of Omega Quintet, but if you’re the sort of person who likes to min-max your characters and have them fighting at maximum effectiveness, be aware that you’ll need to get your hands a little dirty — particularly as the characters in Omega Quintet are significantly more customisable than, say, the Neptunia girls, who don’t allow you to take any control over their development at all, though they do allow you to set up your own custom combos according to how you like to fight. In other words, Omega Quintet’s apparently deliberate obtuseness at times will be a turn-off to some people, but personally, I actually like not being spoon-fed absolutely everything.

Anyway. It’s good. Real good. And I can’t wait to play more. So I’m probably going to do just that right now; I’ve got a combo record to beat, after all.

1928: Verse Maidens

So, I’ve spent the majority of my evening playing Idea Factory and Compile Heart’s first PlayStation 4 title Omega Quintet. And I’m absolutely in love with it.

Omega Quintet, lest you don’t follow Japanese games with the same borderline obsessiveness as I do, is a role-playing game in which you take on the role of Takt, a rather sullen young man who occasionally has trouble with demonstrating the personality trait that he shares his name with. He has fairly good reason to be sullen, however; he lives in a dystopian future in which some sort of lurking unpleasantness called the Blare keeps showing up, driving people mad and turning animals into monsters. (Aside: In the Japanese original, it was called the Beep; I kind of wish they’d kept that name, particularly as the Japanese voices still use it!)

So far, so post-apocalyptic. It wouldn’t be a post-apocalyptic JRPG without a band of plucky heroic types to save the day, however, so enter the Verse Maidens: young women who have the power to drive back the Blare with the power of their songs. Takt and his childhood friend Otoha get swept up in the world of the Verse Maidens as the “ever-17 Momoka” (who is actually 37, and starting to feel it) stumbles across them after exhausting herself clearing out a particularly nasty batch of Blare. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances, Otoha awakens to her potential power as a Verse Maiden, leading Momoka to reluctantly retire and make way for Otoha and two other young, inexperienced Verse Maidens called Kana and Nene.

Idea Factory and Compile Heart have proven themselves to be talented at satirical games with the Hyperdimension Neptunia series, which pokes fun at the video game industry and video games in general. Omega Quintet, meanwhile, tackles the Japanese idol industry, a subject that Idea Factory has previously explored in Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection, and something we don’t have an exact analogue to in the West. The closest equivalent we have is the phenomenon of “manufactured pop groups” like the boy bands of the ’90s and the few examples of groups that have made successes of themselves following talent shows such as The X-Factor and its ilk, but neither of these go anywhere near as far as the Japanese idol industry.

Japanese idols have to contend not only with the most crazy, obsessive fans, but also with their management pretty much taking control of their entire life — including personal relationships, socialising and all the sorts of things that young girls should probably discover and explore for themselves in order to grow up as well-adjusted individuals. Omega Quintet reflects this through Takt gradually being trained up to become the Verse Maidens’ manager and sternly told in no uncertain terms at regular intervals that he absolutely, positively must not do anything inappropriate with any of these girls, lest he tarnish their pure image and anger the fans — because Verse Maidens draw their power from their fanbase.

The character of Momoka is also used as a means of reflecting the falseness of the idols’ lifestyles. We’re initially introduced to Momoka as a young, beautiful, heroic woman whom everyone looks up to and depends upon, but as we see her exhausting herself on what turns out to be her last mission and subsequently revealing her true, rather abrasive personality, we come to understand that she’s been playing a part — for twenty years, in her case. It will be interesting to see how the titular Quintet, once they assemble, will come to terms with this existence, and I suspect it will be an important part of the overall narrative.

Mechanically, Omega Quintet is fairly similar to other Compile Heart titles: there’s a lot of standing around talking with some well-written, witty dialogue, punctuated with dungeon-crawling and snappy combat. Rather than repurposing the Neptunia combat system, however, Omega Quintet has its own rather deep and complex system that encourages you to be as flashy as you can while maintaining control of your characters’ resources. There are some really interesting mechanics in there, such as characters being able to obtain bonus actions for their next turn by fulfilling particular conditions, and a Final Fantasy X-style “turn delay” mechanic allowing you to manipulate the turn order to your advantage. The protagonist also plays an interesting role by not directly participating in combat, instead offering passive support effects to the party and having a limited number of action points to be used throughout the fight either for follow-up “Pursuit” attacks after his current partner has performed an action, or stepping in to soak some of the incoming damage on his partner.

There’s also a frighteningly deep-looking character customisation and advancement system that involves unlocking abilities on a “disc” that works a little like Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid, choosing abilities carefully for a limited number of slots, weapon proficiencies, equipment, outfits with upgradeable durability and “amp” slots for bonus effects, formations, chain skills and all manner of other things. I’m only about 5 hours or so into the game so far and it’s clear there’s a lot of systems I haven’t been introduced to yet; it looks like the complete picture will be quite complex, but the game has proven very accessible so far, gradually introducing concepts and giving you ample time to familiarise yourself with them in practical situations before throwing something new into the mix.

Oh, and the soundtrack is amazing. Which you’d sort of hope for a game ostensibly “about” music. And, as usual for the genre, it’s the battle theme that presents one of the best examples, featuring a distinctly Final Fantasy XIII-esque feel with its use of solo violin over driving rhythms. So what better way to wrap up these first impressions with said piece? Here you go.

1902: Further Adventures in Gamarket

As I continue to make progress through Hyperdevotion Noire, it becomes more and more apparent that the team behind the Neptunia series as a whole simply loves gaming. And there are few places where this is more apparent than in Tsunako’s wonderful character designs and the series’ trademark sharp writing that brings them to life.

Take Ein Al on the right here. As you can probably infer from both her name and design, she is intended to be the personification of the Final Fantasy series.

Her hairstyle and green eyes are intended to call to mind past (and arguably most famous) Final Fantasy protagonist Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII, while her asymmetrical costume is reminiscent of the clothes worn by the cast of Final Fantasy X, particularly that of protagonist Tidus (for the asymmetry) and central cast member Lulu (for the use of belts and buckles in places you perhaps wouldn’t normally find them).

There’s a recurring crystal motif on her jewellery and the accents on her clothes — anyone who has been playing Final Fantasy for some years will be familiar with the crystal imagery used in most installments — and the single “wing” on her left shoulder is presumably a reference to the series’ most famous final boss anthem, Final Fantasy VII’s wonderful One Winged Angel. Meanwhile, the rabbit-like creature on her chest is clearly an homage to the series’ recurring “Moogle” creatures, who often provide some much-needed levity to the games’ typically serious storylines.

But Ein Al’s homage to her source material doesn’t stop with her appearance; as previously noted, it extends to how she is written, too. Introduced to the player as she’s partway through a rather childish battle of one-upmanship with the character Estelle, who personifies the similarly long-running game series Dragon Quest, we quickly discover that Ein Al has a flair for the overdramatic — some might call it melodramatic — and often finds herself called out for being incomprehensible due to her insistence on staying “in character” at all costs. It’s not a coincidence that both of these things are criticisms that are regularly levelled at the Final Fantasy series as a whole, and of course her intense rivalry with Estelle mirrors the longstanding feud between diehard fans of both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, with each believing that their series of choice is somehow “best”.

Hyperdevotion Noire is packed with characters like Ein Al who beautifully encapsulate their source material while being their own entertaining figures in their own right. Lid, pictured to the left, is another great example. She personifies the stealth-centric Metal Gear series with obvious visual elements such as her cybernetic eye, bandana and use of the exclamation mark motif — a recurring visual element in the Metal Gear series, much like Final Fantasy’s use of crystals — on her breast tattoo, but also reinforces this with more subtle character traits like her habit of mispronouncing words when she is stressed or nervous — perhaps a reference to Metal Gear Solid 2’s notorious “Fission Mailed” section which is deliberately designed to confuse, upset and stress out the player.

Lid’s homage to her source material carries across into her game mechanics, too. She’s a character who excels at being away from the front line, instead preferring to attack from afar using throwing knives and stun grenades — and, like her counterpart Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series, she makes creative use of cardboard boxes to conceal herself and incapacitate the enemy with surprise attacks. In the mission where you first encounter her before you recruit her, you have to play appropriately stealthily to even get near her; careless movement will put you in the line of fire of devastating cannons, much as not having full awareness of your surroundings in Metal Gear Solid tends to lead to a quick and painful death even at the hands of the game’s most “grunt-like” enemies.

Hyperdevotion Noire is a little different from the mainline Neptunia series in that there’s a little less focus on the central goddesses — who each personify the major console platforms rather than individual game series or companies — and more focus on a large cast of these incidental characters. Each of the game’s chapters focuses on a few of them and explores them in enough detail for those who are familiar with the source material to give a knowing smile while simultaneously making them appealing characters to those who are just enjoying them at face value. After that, they’re into your party, and the game moves onwards at a pleasingly brisk pace without getting too hung up on any particular characters. It’s a rather “episodic” approach, and it works rather well; those who make use of favourite characters and build up their relationship values in combat are rewarded with short bonus scenes, too, so it’s not just a case of the characters joining the party and then being completely forgotten about.

This right here is the main reason I love the Neptunia series. It’s easy to dismiss it as silly, boobylicious fanservice, but like so much else tossed aside like that by mainstream critics, there’s a hell of a lot more going on there than you might think. And I will continue to enjoy it for as long as they keep making them.

1790: The Second Re;Birth

I was surprised and dismayed to discover that Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2 is out in January. Or at least, it was supposed to be: the European version has apparently been delayed by a week, with the physical release (yes! Unlike the previous installment, this one is apparently getting a retail release) now coming on February 6 and the digital version coming slightly later on February 11. So says Gematsu.

I’m dismayed not because I don’t want more Hyperdimension Neptunia goodness to feast on, but rather because I didn’t know that Re;Birth2 was coming quite so soon — although in retrospect, Re;Birth1 has actually been out for quite a while already, and I just took my sweet time over finishing it. I’m also somewhat dismayed due to the fact that Hyperdevotion Goddess Noire, a spinoff strategy-RPG take on the series starring my favourite character (the eponymous Noire) is, according to a good friend, coming in February — though with Re;Birth2 being delayed a week in Europe I wonder if this will affect Noire too.

I’m actually very curious to see how Re;Birth2 is treated. Re;Birth1 was an obvious massive jump from the original Hyperdimension Neptunia, with a completely rebuilt game system based on that seen in Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, the third game in the series on the PlayStation 3 and, until Re;Birth1 came out, the best installment by far.

Re;Birth2, meanwhile, is a game that is a remake of a title that was much better in the first place. Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 was a lot closer in execution to what would become Victory; its battle system is similar (though not identical) and its game structure is, again, much more like what we see in Victory and Re;Birth1.

This leaves the story as the main thing that will probably be worked over. I enjoyed mk2’s original story; it was perhaps a little heavy-handed at times with its anti-piracy message — even more so than the original game — but it featured some entertaining and adorable characters getting into a variety of scrapes, including some surprising and even quite disturbing situations. (The “Conquest” ending of mk2 is particularly notorious for not only being a “bad” ending that takes significantly more effort to get than the “true” ending, but also for taking a turn for the seriously grimdark in comparison to the rest of the game’s candy-coloured shenanigans.) I find myself wondering whether it’s going to have as significant of a rewrite as Re;Birth1 did, or if it’s simply going to be revamped in terms of presentation — unlike other installments in the series, which used gorgeous 2D character art in dialogue sequences, mk2 used 3D polygonal models that looked significantly inferior to the 2D artwork.

I also find myself wondering whether or not there will be such a strong focus on Neptune’s sister and mk2’s protagonist Nepgear this time around; subsequent installments in the series have made a joke over Nepgear being “boring” in comparison to the lively, spunky Neptune and the poor girl — actually one of my favourite characters, since she’s just so adorably earnest about everything — frequently ends up the butt of everyone’s jokes.

I realise a lot of these questions are probably already answered by people who have played the Japanese version, but I’ve been doing my best to remain unspoiled and have so far succeeded. I’ll be very interested to see the new game when it arrives, and I’ll most certainly be continuing to support the series with my hard-earned money and play time. So bad luck, reader; you’ll almost certainly be hearing more about it early in the new year!

1783: Nurse Nep-Nep

I’ve been off work ill for the last three days, and not the fun kind of ill where you can just lie in bed and have people bring you food and drink without really having to “suffer” very much. No, I’ve had a rather unpleasant stomach bug of the — if you’ll pardon the graphic detail for a moment — “I need to go to the toilet roughly every half an hour and now my arse is burning with the fury of a thousand angry suns” variety. And it doesn’t seem to have shifted itself just yet, which means I’m probably in for another rough night if the noises my stomach is currently making are anything to go by.

But I digress somewhat; taking the time off to recover has allowed me to catch up on some handheld gaming, because we all know handheld gaming is the best gaming when you’re ill, because it’s easily portable for those circumstances like, say, when you need to urgently rush to the toilet to fire off another salvo of acidic excrement that would probably make a pretty solid special move in combat were it not for the searing pain it temporarily inflicted on the origin point.

Um. Anyway. Yes. Handheld gaming. Specifically, I took the opportunity to try and beat Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, which I’ve been playing for a while now. Like most Neptunia games, I found myself not really wanting it to end, but I also eventually reached a point where I was running out of things that it was possible to do in a single playthrough, and so I powered on to the ending, beat the final boss, saw the credits (which, in typical Neptunia tradition, are accompanied by a glorious, lovingly rendered pixel-art, game-style synopsis of what you’ve just played) and promptly started a New Game + with a mind to cleaning up the last few Trophies I hadn’t quite finished off. Specifically, I had four characters to recruit — Nepgear, Uni, Rom and Ram, the four “CPU Candidates” who were originally introduced in Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 — and 100 million Credits to acquire via some means, but I decided to take a momentary detour to the game’s optional “Colosseum” mode to fight some tough battles with the promise of various characters’ ultimate weapons as a reward.

And hoo boy. Ultimate is the word. Rather than the gradual creeping up of stats that most weapons provided over the course of the normal game, the various characters’ ultimate weapons boost their stats by a ridiculous degree, making even the toughest bosses melt like butter beneath your relentless onslaught. Couple this with the Celestia Bangle armour that you get for beating the game with the True ending — only one, sadly; if you want more you need to beat it multiple times — and you have a nigh-unstoppable fighting force.

Or so you’d think, anyway; pleasingly, even when geared up with this array of “best in slot” equipment, there are still plenty of stiff challenges throughout the game — challenges that were simply insurmountable when tackled with regular equipment, but which merely become quite difficult when equipped to the max in this manner. In the meantime, it becomes possible to hack and slash through the main story in a couple of hours (assuming you’re skipping dialogue sequences) rather than the 55 hours or so it took me to beat it the first time — with story bosses that once proved a roadblock to progression falling after just one or two attacks in most cases. Eminently satisfying.

This is something that developer Compile Heart is good at, in my experience; while the difficulty curve throughout the game may be more of a pit of spikes of varying height on your first playthrough, breaking through the initial barrier and coming around for a second pass gives you a glorious feeling of power and supremacy over almost everything in the world — though there’s still the odd enemy here and there that is more than willing to knock that cocky smile off your face if you’re getting a bit too confident.

So far my post-game cleanup is going well; I’ve just unlocked Nepgear and almost have enough MB left to unlock either Uni or Rom and Ram (they come as a pair) by the end of this second playthrough. Then the only thing left is a whole lot of fighting one of the toughest foes in the game in the hope of acquiring 100 million credits. After that, I’ll be happy to add Re;Birth1 to my list of “100% completed” (or at least Platinum trophied) games — a sure sign that I’ve had a blast with it.

Bring on Re;Birth2, then, I’m almost ready!

1768: Four Goddesses

Having beaten Senran Kagura Burst recently at last, I’ve been turning my attention back to Vita title Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, the “remake” of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia — a series that I first discovered in January of last year and promptly fell head-over-heels in love with.

I put the word “remake” in inverted commas because to call Re;Birth1 a remake is to do it something of an injustice. This is a complete and total overhaul of the game from top to bottom — graphics, gameplay, mechanics, story, characters, music, everything. In essence, it’s a completely new game that even those who played and enjoyed the original — I know there’s some of you out there, even though it was the weakest in the series by a very long shot indeed — can get a huge kick out of.

All of the above said, Re;Birth1 does also recycle a whole ton of material from previous two games Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 and Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory — principally dungeon aesthetics and layouts, monsters and music. Consequently, those of you who played mk2 and/or Victory will probably find a lot of familiar material in Re;Birth1 but that’s not actually a bad thing; the comfortable familiarity of the recycled material gives the game a feeling of consistency with its predecessors (for obvious reasons) while the new stuff that is included — no, it’s not identical to its predecessors — stands out all the more for being a big contrast to the material that’s been used in three games now. In essence, the game represents a refinement of the Hyperdimension Neptunia formula that developer Compile Heart has been experimenting with over the course of the previous installments and, while not completely perfect — a couple of minor elements from the previous games that I really liked have been ditched for Re;Birth1 — it is, by far, the definitive Neptunia experience, and a game that is beautifully designed for portable play.

Neptunia games have always been about two things: a silly, enjoyable, well-written and witty story coupled with some surprisingly compelling, grind-and-farm-heavy dungeon crawling. Re;Birth1 is no exception; its narrative retells the story of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia with a few twists here and there as well as a host of new characters, while there’s plenty of incentive to dungeon crawl thanks to its quest system and one of the main mechanical highlights: the sprawling Remake system.

Remake allows you to craft various things. So far so conventional, but unlike many other crafting systems, Remake allows you to craft game mechanics as well as items, weapons and armour. Finding the game a bit challenging? Dig up a programmer’s plan to weaken all the enemies and hack it into the game to make things a bit easier for yourself. Want to find the hidden treasures more easily? Build your own treasure scanner to enhance the minimap. Annoyed at that age-old RPG problem, “You Failed to Escape”? Craft yourself the ability to escape from battle with a 100% success rate.

Of course, all this makes it sound a lot easier than it actually is; to complete these plans you’ll have to first of all find the plan in the first place — they can be anywhere from inside treasure cubes in dungeons to held by various NPCs around the world map that pop up after every major story beat — and then collect all the ingredients, most of which tend to come from monsters. The game doesn’t hold your hand with this; if you want to craft a plan, you’ll have to figure out where on Earth you’re going to get all the bits from, though thankfully a straightforward dungeon and monster encyclopedia in the menu allows you to see which enemies haunt which areas, and what they might drop when you kill them — assuming they’ve already dropped it for you at least once. Through this system, you’re encouraged to explore the various dungeons and fight as many different enemy types as possible in order to fill out that monster guide — the more complete it is, the less you’ll have to look up on the Internet later.

The nice thing, though, is that it’s all completely optional. There’s no obligation to go fiddling around with plans at all — though your life will be significantly easier if you do — so if you simply want to plough through the main story as quickly as you can, that option is always open to you. Likewise, there’s no obligation to complete quests, unlock optional dungeons or kill boss monsters — though failing to do so may well leave you a bit underlevelled come story boss time, at least on your first playthrough.

As with previous installments of the Neptunia series, the game is absolutely dripping with personality. Each character is a clearly-defined — though often (deliberately) tropetacular — person in their own right, with many of them poking fun at established video game and anime characters. Indeed, a number of the new characters for Re;Birth1 are direct references to game series and developers such as Steins;Gate creator MAGES., Senran Kagura publisher Marvelous AQL and legendary fighting game series Tekken. Each of these characters is beautifully designed to encapsulate the very essence of the thing they’re supposed to be referencing; MAGES. wouldn’t look out of place in Steins;Gate herself, for example, and even has alternate colour schemes that directly reference the characters Mayushii and Faris, while Marvelous AQL has costumes based on the Senran Kagura girls’ iconic outfits.

It’s a cliché to describe something as a “love letter” to something else, but I’m going to do it anyway. Hyperdimension Neptunia has always been a love letter to fans of Japanese video games and anime, being packed full of references both obvious and incredibly subtle, and Re;Birth1 very much continues that. It’s a game that celebrates the joy of having fun with interactive entertainment, and I defy you to play through it with anything other than a huge smile on your face.

Except, of course, when Killachine flattens your party for the fifth time in a row because you didn’t prepare properly and ended up with everyone stunned and clustered together, just waiting to be cleaved. You don’t have to keep smiling then. But you’ll probably try again rather than flinging your Vita across the room.

My only trouble with it is that I don’t really want it to end. Although when those end credits do eventually roll, I can console myself with the fact that there are three new Neptunia games out there that I haven’t played yet — strategy RPG Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart, the rather Senran Kagura-esque brawler Hyperdimension Neptunia U and probably the most exciting offering: PS4 title Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory II, a game that, if I don’t own a PlayStation 4 by then, will almost certainly make me go out and buy one immediately the moment it is released.

Yes, I’m a fan. And unashamed of that fact. It’s a series that consistently makes me smile; given how much I love it now, it’s rather odd to (re)discover today that I’ve only been playing these games since January of last year. But I hope I’ll be able to continue enjoying them for many years to come yet.

1688: Rebirth

The nice thing about having an uninterrupted hour for a lunch break — something which I have at my new job (yes, I’m going to keep mentioning it while the novelty is still there), and something which I often did not have when I was working in schools, retail and even games journalism — is that it provides the ideal opportunity to get in a bit of handheld gaming time.

I have quite the backlog on both 3DS (well, DS if we’re being completely honest about it) and Vita, and just recently I added another game to the latter’s collection. I couldn’t not, though; if you’re a regular reader you will, of course, know that I couldn’t possibly let a new Hyperdimension Neptunia game pass by without immediately purchasing it — even if I knew I wouldn’t get to it immediately.

The game in question is Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1, the curiously punctuated remake of the game that started the whole series off. I’ve played a little over an hour so far, and predictably, I’m totally in love with it.

The original Hyperdimension Neptunia was a funny game. I’d be wary of calling it “good” or recommending it even to the most open-minded, fanservice-positive players out there, but despite its many, many flaws I liked it enough to play it all the way through, then move on to its sequels Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 and Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. (And the Vita dating sim Hyperdimension Neptunia Producing Perfection, which I’m still yet to beat properly.)

Hyperdimension Neptunia was effectively a visual novel punctuated by repetitive dungeon-crawling sequences that ran at an appalling frame rate and featured a genuinely interesting but somewhat clunky battle system. I actually rather enjoyed this latter aspect a lot more than many other people; I appreciated the puzzle-like nature of setting up custom combos that you could chain endlessly — perhaps swapping back-line characters in and out along the way — and I was fascinated by manipulating the AI-driven in-battle item “crafting” system. This latter aspect was just plain bizarre — you had to set percentage chances that characters would use specific items upon meeting trigger conditions, and there was no means of just manually using an item.

The former aspect — the visual novel-style story sequences — proved to be the real draw for me, though. They were what kept me coming back time and time again, more than happy to endure the dungeon-crawling in the name of advancing the story and seeing what Neptune and her friends were up to next.

Hyperdimension Neptunia’s story wasn’t particularly complex, but one thing the series has been quite consistently throughout its surprisingly short lifespan is clever. Yes, that’s right, clever. On the surface, it might seem like moe anime fluff full of squeaky-voiced girls squeaking at one another. And to a certain extent that’s true. But beneath that candy-coloured exterior lies some clever, well-written satire of the ridiculousness that is gaming. Not the stupidity we’ve seen around gaming in the last few weeks, mind; rather, a series of on-point observations and sidelong glances at the way the different “factions” of the industry have behaved over the years. The way Sony likes to believe it’s the best; the way Microsoft has habitually catered to specific types of gamers; the way Nintendo handles business with ruthless efficiency, even when it doesn’t make any friends while doing so.

Not only that, but the series has been packed with plenty of references to numerous video games — through its dialogue, through its incidental recurring characters and even through the monsters you fight, which include space invaders, Pac-Man ghosts and sentient dating sims. All this added up to a considerable amount of charm that far outweighed its technical and design shortcomings.

Re;Birth1 had a lot to live up to, then. And based on an admittedly short amount of time with it so far, it appears to be living up to expectations. Rather than word-for-word recreating the original with the modernised, much better gameplay systems of Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, it instead acknowledges (and frequently lampshades) the fact that it is a remake. Basic story beats have so far been similar, but the specifics of how you get to them are a bit different. And the gameplay has been totally revamped, featuring Victory’s fantastic combat system — now explained far better than it has ever been in any previous installment — plus some interesting new tricks such as the “Remake” system, which allows you to “craft” everything from items to be sold in shops to new gameplay mechanics.

Amusingly, it runs far better on the Vita than it ever did on the more powerful PS3, too, and despite making use of a lot of the same audio-visual assets and even maps from the previous two games, it feels like a pleasantly fresh experience to be able to carry it around in your pocket.

If Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory was anything to go by, I expect Re;Birth1 to keep me busy for a very long time indeed. Now, if only there weren’t a zillion and one other brilliant games out now all vying for my attention, too…

1374: Nep-Ko

Now that I’ve finished Tales of Xillia I am, as promised, once again playing Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory. I’m now pushing 60 hours of playtime, a significant proportion of the last few of which have been spent doing nothing but non-story content.

And lordy, what a lot of non-story content there is. There’s sidequests to do, which tend to have fairly modest rewards but challenge you to battle powerful monsters and master the game’s various mechanics. There’s a crafting system, which requires you to discover new recipes for various items, then gather the materials for them either from enemies or “harvest points” in dungeons. There’s the Scout system, in which you send out numerous NPCs on your behalf to check out dungeons and potentially manipulate the items, enemies, drop rates or experience point gain in particular areas and occasionally discover completely new places. And there’s little tricks like earning money by gathering an item called “Invisible Cloth,” purchasing a cheap costume, combining it with the aforementioned Invisible Cloth to make a new item of clothing and then selling them for 1.5 million credits a pop.

All of this side stuff is conspiring to prevent me from advancing the game’s story. Said story is immensely entertaining as it always has been in the Neptunia series, but Victory’s mechanics and optional content are far more solid than even Neptunia mk2, which certainly had plenty of things to do. The combat system has been refined into something that is immensely enjoyable to repeatedly engage in, the difficulty has been ramped up considerably over the rather straightforward mk2, and just chasing down these sidequests and items is extremely addictive.

Although the Neptunia series is widely derided by the mainstream press, I’m consistently impressed by what it’s managed to achieve over the course of three games. What initially began as something of a cheap joke at the expense of the games industry and the “console wars” in particular has developed into something much more over time — each of the game’s main characters has been developed into their own unique person with a distinctive personality. Okay, there’s plenty of standard anime tropes at work, but combined with the fact that these characters are supposed to represent games consoles and manufacturers, it really works; why wouldn’t PlayStation be a tsundere who enjoys nothing more than working too hard, and why wouldn’t she have a sister afraid of never quite being able to match up? Why wouldn’t Nintendo live in a vibrantly-coloured candyland but actually be ruthless, cold and prone to bouts of completely irrational anger?

By nearly 60 hours into Victory, I’m no longer really thinking of the Neptunia cast as “the Sega one, the PlayStation one, the Microsoft one”; they’ve become great characters in their own right, and their interactions with one another are a real highlight. In fact, such is the popularity and success of the series in its native Japan, it’s got its own anime spinoff which I’m curious to watch at some point, and there are several new games on the way, too.

I find it quite odd but also rather pleasing how much this game series has resonated with me since I first picked it up on a whim out of interest one day. “Objectively” speaking — in as much as it’s possible to be “objective” when talking about pieces of entertainment — there are far better games out there, both in terms of gameplay and technical proficiency, but something about the adventures of Neptune and the gang has really spoken to me ever since that clunky first game, and has ensured that any time something with the words Hyperdimension Neptunia is released, it’s pretty much an instapurchase for me. It’s been a while since a “big-name” game has elicited that sort of feeling from me.

1256: V for Victory

Been playing a bit more Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory this evening. While the newest game is, as I mentioned a few days ago, more of an evolution from mk2 than the revolution that mk2 was over the original, I’m starting to notice some more pronounced differences — differences that make it abundantly clear Idea Factory and Compile Heart are both receptive to feedback and keen to iterate on their past work in order to make things better in subsequent installments.

Let’s take Victory’s battle system as an example. At first glance, it appears almost identical to mk2’s mechanics. On a single character’s turn, they can move within a set radius according to their Move stat (which tends to be improved from its per-character baseline value via equipment rather than increased through levelling up) and, if they can reach an enemy, they may attack it. Different weapons have different “threat” areas, meaning that some are designed for focusing on a single enemy, while others have long areas that can attack enemies in a line; others can “sweep” in a wide arc in front of the character. Usually, you can position yourself in such a way that it’s possible to hit two or more enemies at once for the most efficient combat. There are three different “types” of attack — Rush attacks hit more times, Power attacks are stronger (and often magical) and Break attacks have a stronger effect on the enemy’s “Guard Points” bar, which, when depleted, causes them to take more damage.

In these respects, the two battle systems are identical. But from hereon, they diverge somewhat. Today I am going to talk in detail about how they are different from one another. A good proportion of you will not find this in the slightest bit interesting, and I make absolutely no apologies whatsoever for that. I’m going to talk about it anyway.

In mk2, the amount of attacks a single character could perform in a turn was determined by their “AP” (Ability Points) value. Each attack they performed cost a set number of ability points to perform, and the character could continue attacking until they had run out. Alternatively, it was also possible to finish the combo early and “bank” some AP for the following turn — in order to perform some of the special moves, this was necessary, as the AP cost was more than the character’s baseline maximum AP in many cases. If a combo spent over a particular number of AP in a single turn, an “EX” move became possible, which tended to be more powerful, hit more times or have some sort of special effect.

In Victory, meanwhile, the AP system has been removed entirely, and each character’s combo in a turn may only ever consist of up to four moves. (At least, this is true at the early stage I’m at, anyway.) The big difference comes in how you assign the Rush, Power and Break moves to each character; rather than being able to assign any unlocked moves at will and being able to perform them if you had enough AP, Victory gives each move a “CP” (Combo Points) cost, and each character an allowance of CP that gradually increases as they level up. Early in the game, there are not enough CP available to fill all possible slots in the command list, meaning that you’re forced to think a bit more carefully about each character’s strengths and weaknesses when prioritising which moves they should have available.

This is a very simple and straightforward change to mk2’s system, but it works incredibly well. While I enjoyed fighting in mk2, there was relatively little to differentiate between a lot of the different characters, special moves aside. In Victory, meanwhile, it becomes possible (and indeed necessary) to specialise characters in each of the three types of attack, then make them work as a team to take down enemies. For example, my current party contains Plutia, who is weak at physical attacks (particularly Rushes) but has some strong elemental-infused Power attacks and is also very good at Break attacks; Neptune, who is a fairly well-rounded character I have focusing on Rush attacks; and Noire, who I have using some strong Power attacks.

With this configuration, I can have Plutia run in and wear down the enemy’s guard, then Neptune and Noire can step in for the kill. Noire does more damage with her power attacks; Neptune’s Rush attacks cause the “EX meter” to rise quicker. When said meter reaches particular boundaries, strong “EX Finisher” moves become available, allowing for slightly longer combos with special effects at the end. Later in the game, the EX meter can also be used to unleash extremely powerful special attacks, though doing so depletes it, unlike the Finisher moves.

Another big change comes in the SP (Skill Point) system. In mk2, SP, which were used to cast spells and/or allow the characters to transform into their more powerful “Hard Drive Divinity” forms, gradually charged up as the characters took and received damage. In Victory, they start a dungeon expedition with a full bar, which gradually depletes as special abilities are used. In this sense, it’s more like a traditional bank of magic points, which is arguably a little less creative but works somewhat better. The SP system of mk2 nerfed the Hard Drive Divinity feature significantly in that it was often only possible to remain transformed for a turn or two at a time, which didn’t seem quite in keeping with the supposedly awesome power of these “CPU” goddesses. In Victory, meanwhile, you can transform at the start of a fight and remain comfortably in HDD for quite some time — what you have to take into account here instead is managing your stock of SP over the course of the whole dungeon, rather than within the individual fight.

These few changes to Victory’s battle system help make a game that initially seems rather similar actually quite distinct from its predecessor, which is very much a good thing. The enemies have been buffed up somewhat, too, meaning that you have to work quite hard to defeat some of them, and many of them are more than capable of giving you a good smack in the face in return. I don’t remember getting a Game Over more than once or twice over the course of mk2; less than 10 hours into Victory and I’ve already had 4 or 5, and all of them have been my own stupid fault rather than the game being cheap. This is a good sign — while piss-easy combat has its appeal, it’s nice to have a bit of challenge now and then.

Anyway. Suffice to say I am enjoying Victory so far and have little doubt that I will spend an obscene amount of time on seeing everything it has to offer in the long term. I am, however, a bit put out that my favourite character IF doesn’t seem to be in this one very much! Oh well. You can’t have everything, and Plutia is kind of adorable in a dopey sort of way. Also, Noire still makes me weak at the knees. “I-it’s not like I’m lonely or anything…!”

1099: Nep-Nep-Nep-Nep

It’s another Hyperdimension Neptunia post, I’m afraid. Normally I’d make an effort to try not to talk too much about the same thing several days in a row, but having started the sequel to Hyperdimension Neptunia (imaginatively titled Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2) this evening, I felt compelled to share some of my first impressions. (Besides, this is my blog, dammit.)

That first impression can largely be summed up by me nodding and smiling at developers Compile Heart and Idea Factory and going “Good job, guys.”

You see, Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 takes all the things that were good about its predecessor — an amusing but oddly well-realised world; some excellent, memorable characters; some lovely 2D art — and ditches all the things that were a bit rubbish. Consequently, out go the endless cookie-cutter dungeons, out go the PS1-era random encounters, out go the weirder aspects of the battle system (like the bizarre mid-combat “item crafting” system and the seeming necessity to skip animations to take full advantage of the “guard break” mechanic) and out go the sequences that served no purpose (waiting for landmasses to approach and then having to run an insultingly easy dungeon every time you wanted to travel anywhere).

In comes a game which is not just a dream come true for a Hyperdimension Neptunia fan, but a game which actually appears to be a very good JRPG generally. Okay, you’re still controlling an all-female party of candy-coloured self-referential anime archetypes so if you’re not on board with that you’re never going to be on board with this series, but almost everything about the first game that sucked a bit has seemingly been rectified with this new game. It’s still not perfect and it’s still rough around the edges — the in-engine graphics are still a bit PS2-ish in quality, riddled with jaggies (can’t remember the last time I wrote that word!) and the frame rate still blows, but just like the original managed to be entertaining despite its flaws and technical shortcomings, so too does its sequel. Only said sequel is, as I say, a much better game on the whole, too.

The biggest overhaul to the game’s base can be seen in the battle system. It’s still focused on making combos, but there’s no longer the need to micromanage every possible combination of three different buttons pressed up to four times. I actually quite liked this aspect of the original, as it gave the game a fun puzzly mechanic as you attempted to make combos that flowed nicely in to one another, but it did make getting a new character a bit tiresome, as you had to spend a good 10-15 minutes setting up their button combinations — usually only to discover in a boss fight that you’d done something wrong somewhere. (Fortunately, it was possible to rejig combos in mid-fight, which was nice.)

Nope, what we have now is a much more streamlined system — triangle button does multi-hit attacks, square button does powerful attacks, cross button does attacks that prioritise damage to the enemies’ “guard gauge”. Like before, each attack costs a certain number of Ability Points (AP) to perform. An initial attack is of a fixed type, but from that point on, you can customise the specific “move” (and AP cost) that is assigned to each of the three buttons depending on if it is the second, third or fourth attack in a combo. Characters unlock “EX” attacks as they level up, requiring that the player use both a specific button combination and expend a particular number of AP during a combo before triggering a more powerful special move. Each character has their own suite of “skills” outside the attacks, too, which cost a combination of AP and Skill Points (SP, which charge up through attacking enemies) to perform. These vary from special attacks to support buffs and healing skills, and mean there’s no longer the reliance on random chance when attempting to keep your party at full health.

Combat now allows characters to move, too, giving the whole thing a light strategic feel, as all attacks cover a particular area, and characters clustered together can all feel the brunt of one enemy’s attack if you’re not careful. The whole thing is way more fast-paced than the previous game — a feeling helped even more by the fact that the load times between field and battle screens are lightning-fast.

I’m not far into the story yet, but it’s been enjoyable so far, despite what essentially amounted to an extremely mild tentacle scene approximately five minutes into the experience. (Said “tentacles” — actually cables — weren’t doing any more than just holding the previous game’s “CPU” goddesses prisoner, but it’s very clear that it was a reference to… well, you know.) New protagonist Nepgear (hah) is appealing and endearing, and successfully distinguishes herself from her ditzy sister — the previous game’s protagonist — by basically being the exact opposite in terms of personality. Where Neptune was loud, brash, confident and, let’s not beat around the bush, endearingly stupid at times, Nepgear is much more reserved, rational, intelligent and innocent. There’s a lot of scope for her to grow as a character — particularly when accompanied by the increasingly world-weary IF (rapidly becoming my favourite character in the series) and the ever-optimistic Compa — so I’ll be interested to see how she develops as her journey progresses.

There’s still a heavy focus on non-linear and repeated sidequesting in the new game, but it actually explains what effect doing quests has right from the beginning this time instead of, you know, not at all. Yes, the “shares” system from the previous game is back again, but it’s integrated into the story this time, representing the world’s level of belief in the “good” goddesses and the evil forces of “Arfoire” — the previous game’s villain and a thinly-veiled reference to the popular Nintendo DS storage device that was often used for piracy. Essentially, doing quests now wrests back “control” of particular areas from Arfoire’s followers, allowing you to strengthen an area’s belief in the goddesses and ultimately turn things around for the world, which has seemingly gone to shit in the intervening time between the end of the first game and the start of the second. Manipulating the shares is also key to unlocking certain events.

Oh, and there’s a whole relationship system between Nepgear and her party members now, rather charmingly called “Lily Rank”. (For those who don’t get why it’s called this, the Japanese word for “lily” is “yuri”, which is a word also often used to refer to same-sex romantic and/or sexual relationships between women — rather appropriate for describing the relationships between members of an all-female party, particularly as within the first three hours Nepgear has already been kissed by one of them, ostensibly to shock her into transforming into her “goddess candidate” form for the first time since escaping captivity in the intro.) Characters with a better Lily Rank between them provide bonuses to one another in combat, and can be paired up to do various joint special abilities. Naturally, a better relationship between them also results in more scenes between them, too.

Also the music’s much better by about a thousand percent.

Also it’s just great. I like it a lot. Actually, I liked the first one a lot, despite its flaws. I can see myself really loving the second one. And the third one’s coming in March! Yay!

I’ll shut up now.